Health Beyond Civilization

People who do-it-yourself with their health often put much of their emphasis on diet, possibly because it is in part the most obvious thing you can control. There really is a lot that can be affected by your food choices and many other factors involving how and when you eat, and why. But digestion is really much more than just choosing what foods to put into your mouth.

Digestion is the central pillar of our biological existence. We were born with certain characteristics determined by genes and ancestry, shaped by influences in our environment; but it’s the constant intake, processing, and excretion of substances that allows us to continue to exist moment by moment. Thus, in these terms, digestion encompasses everything that flows through the body. That list includes, but is not limited to:

• Air
• Water
• Sensory nourishment
• Vision: Colors, shapes, images, etc.
• Sound: Music, noises, rhythms
• Taste
• Touch
• Odor
• Energy
• The natural world: Mythical elements (fire, air, earth, water), nonhuman organisms (animals, insects, plants)
• Light: Sun, moon, stars
• Rhythms: Sunlight, moonlight, tides, seasons
• Electromagnetic radiation
• Relationships, human and nonhuman
• Mental and intellectual stimulation

And, of course:

• Food

All of these influence and nourish the body, in large ways or small, and so all can be considered an aspect of health and an aspect of this influx of energy from outside to inside, an influx that usually just gets boiled down to digestion and the food we eat. Clearly there’s so much more. Unfortunately, many of these are not even recognized, but that makes such obscure disorders, like allergies to fluorescent lighting, no less real.

At any rate, we’ll be going into many of these in much more depth. This is just a teaser.